This has nothing to do with Richard Pryor.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

This has nothing to do with Richard Pryor.

Let's play the Aumann Game.

The rules are at the linky, but the gist is simple: for each statement, without using google-fu, tell me your prior gut feeling regarding the probability it is true. For each answer p(x), your score is tabulated by converting to belief decibels (10 log_10 p(x)), then summing over each answer (according to logarithmic summation rules). Alternatively, you could convert each answer to bits (- log_2 p(x)) and sum to arrive at how much information about the world you think you are giving.

Note: assigning zero probability, absolute impossibility, to any statement drags your entire score to (10 log_10 1/infinity) ~ negative infinity. This is not good, you just expressed perfect, psychotic, infinite skepticism and, at the same time, godlike omniscience. Certainty, in contrast, raises your score toward (10 log_10 1) ~ 0 decibels.

Alternatively using bits, assigning absolute improbability to any statement raises your entire score to infinity: you are attempting to describe all of reality. In contrast, assigning certainty drags your score by one bit.

One of the morals of the game: absolute certainty means you are saying nothing, and absolute doubt means you are saying everything. Between this Schylla and Charybdis, so tempting to philosophers and politicians, the sane man must walk. When in doubt, doubt a little less.

Statistics

1. The population of Transylvania is less than the population of New York City.

2. India has more enclaves (enclosed regions) in Bangladeshi borders than vice versa.

3. Tennessee is wealthier than Saudi Arabia.

4. More people speak Klingon than Lojban.

5. San Francisco is more population dense than New York City.

History

6. In the 1950's Fidel Castro's brother Raoul crashed in a flying automobile.

7. Moresnet almost voted to make Esperanto its national language prior to WWII.

8. President McKinley was governor of Ohio.

9. No people died as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.

Future

10. Before 2020, there will be mass adoption of exabyte hard drives.

11. An artificial intelligence will not be widely acknowledged to have passed a Turing Test until the year 2050.

12. Some country will, in the next decade, using currently available biotechnology or nuclear technology, destroy over 35% of another country's population.

13. England will restrict immigration policies by 2010.

Counterfactual

14. In a randomly selected Everett Branch splitting from ours on(IARSEBSFOO) January 20th, 2000, Al Gore won the presidency of the United States of America.

15. IARSEBSFOO 4 billion years ago, a meteor collision rendered the earth sterile.

16. IARSEBSFOO 13 billion years ago, an almost insignificant assymetry caused the universe to evolve with a charge distribution opposite our own (into predominately antimatter).

17. IARSEBSFOO this moment, your double will experience the plot of your favorite fictional novel.

Internet

18. "Vegeta" gets more google hits than "Vegetable".

19. "Paris Hilton" gets more google hits than "Paris France".

20. Google can accurately correct you if you mispell the proper name "Janowycz".

21. More bits of pornography are, at any one moment, being downloaded than the entire information traffic of Canada.

Update: Feel free to suggest alternate scoring techniques. Before doing so, read a little about Information Content and Bayesian Inference. In any case, read Jaynes' eerily available textbook on Inference.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at June 08, 2008 15:48 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery, bayesianity
Comments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

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This has nothing to do with Richard Pryor.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at June 08, 2008 15:48 EST | Permalink | comments |
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This has nothing to do with Richard Pryor.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at June 08, 2008 15:48 EST | Permalink | comments | postCountTB('716352'); geekery, bayesianityComments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

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Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at June 08, 2008 15:48 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery, bayesianity
Comments open but moderated. I reserve permission to kill spammers on sight.

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